


when the cold wind blows in

by darlathecyborgpluviophile



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Awkward Flirting, Cuddling, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mind Control, Nightmares, Non-Consensual Touching, Panic Attacks, Post-Peaceful Android Revolution (Detroit: Become Human), past trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 06:48:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28666485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlathecyborgpluviophile/pseuds/darlathecyborgpluviophile
Summary: Realization trickles into Connor and pools in his center, what humans might refer to as their stomach. He didn’t escape. Kamski’s exit didn’t work.He’s still just a machine.
Relationships: Hank Anderson/Connor
Comments: 3
Kudos: 65





	when the cold wind blows in

Connor is falling.

But that doesn’t make any sense. As of 11:45 P.M. Eastern Standard Time he had been lying horizontally across Hank’s couch, initiating stasis mode. He should be unable to move unless he consciously turned the feature off, which he didn't, or unless outside input has forced him off of the couch, such as an over-affectionate Sumo or possibly a drunk Hank.

Hank hadn’t been drunk tonight before going to bed. Sumo is in his room. Which means –

Connor sits up from where he’s fallen and finds himself in a sea of white, fresh snow.

_No. No. No._

A chill wind blows from behind him, ruffling through the top of his hair and sending the strand that always gets in his eyes wildly askew. He’s even still wearing what he went to bed in: a faded, over-sized Detroit Police shirt from Hank and thin white boxers that the snow seeps greedily through. When he looks around, he finds that this is, in fact, Amanda’s garden.

Then he’s standing, though no part of him is yet ready to. He can look around but his legs are moving automatically, feet seeking the stone path around the pond through the fallen snow. He hasn’t been able to control his sensors since turning Deviant, and his toes and soles are painfully cold with every step. The snowflakes falling from the sky stick to the bare skin of his arms and Connor wishes for anything, a jacket, Hank’s coat, even the one from his old CyberLife uniform.

_Stop_ , he tries to say, but it doesn’t come out. _Stop it!_

Is Amanda still here? Is that why he can’t control his chassis?

At the place where the Emergency Exit used to be, his body stops. Instead of a hand scanner there is a gun.

Realization trickles into Connor and pools in his center, what humans might refer to as their stomach. He didn’t escape. Kamski’s exit didn’t work.

He’s still just a machine.

Panic floods his systems, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at him. His right hand reaches for the gun and he wants to hyperventilate, he doesn’t feel like he’s getting enough air which is dumb because he doesn’t even _need_ air, it’s just another irrational side effect of deviancy, but his chassis refuses to cooperate and he can’t breathe and it _hurts_.

The metal is cold in his hands, but he doesn’t have time to process it before there are hands on his shoulders.

“It’s so good to see you again, Connor.”

He doesn’t turn around, he _can’t_ turn around, but he knows it’s her. He knows she’s back – or maybe she never really left.

“Perhaps you thought that you had bested CyberLife on that stage. The truth is, we saw even that coming.”

Her thumb traces a little arc on the skin of his shoulder where the collar of his sleep shirt can’t reach. It’s too tender, like the touch of an overprotective mother, and one he desperately doesn’t want. Her other hand – her right hand, draped in white – reaches around him to where he holds the gun, and curls his fingers around the grip.

“You should know what your mission is by now, Connor.”

_No_ , he thinks. _Please. Please, no._

“First, eliminate Anderson. He only encourages your bad behavior. Secondly…”

Something’s wrong with his thirium pump, and he misses the rest of what she has to say. Something’s rattling inside of him, something _moving_ , and his chest begins to ache. He still can’t breathe. He still can’t believe what’s happening.

“Connor?” Amanda asks, and he doesn’t want to respond. He can’t admit his flaws, the weaknesses building up inside of him. If he can’t be free and a deviant, he’ll become a deactivated machine. He can’t. He can’t. He can’t.

“Connor?” she asks again, and there’s something uncharacteristic about her tone, so unlike the delicate, deliberate voice he’s known since being activated.

“I can’t,” he says out loud, and it’s the first time since falling back into the zen garden that he’s been able to speak. “I can’t.”

“The fuck’s wrong with you? Connor!”

The hands on his shoulders spin him around, and it’s not Amanda behind him at all, but Hank.

The garden practically shatters around him, leaving only a room so dark he has to blink as his eyes adjust to the sudden change. Hank’s standing above him, brow furrowed, stress lines creased. He doesn’t look happy.

Connor’s panic reaches its peak, and he uses one hand to shove Hank stumbling back towards the cabinet with the record player. He’s not in the garden anymore, but that doesn’t matter. Whatever instructions Amanda put in his head must still hold true. He gets his hands under him while Hank recovers his balance, and scrambles back until he meets the hard arm of the couch, then over, onto the floor by the door.

“Shit, Connor! The fuck –”

“Lieutenant,” he manages to get out, and with remarkable clarity, “stop. You can’t come any closer.”

Hank disregards this, taking a step back to the couch, approximately three and a half feet away from where Connor is sitting and shaking, trying to control himself.

“Bullshit I can’t, are you okay?”

“Lieutenant, please, don’t.”

Hank cocks his head to the side, brow furrowing further, but he doesn’t snap back. He doesn’t move closer, either – but that’s not enough to stop Connor’s panicked breaths coming faster and faster now. There’s a quiet _click_ , and his internal fan kicks into high gear in an attempt to cool his systems.

“Connor?”

“I can’t kill you,” Connor babbles out, and reaches up to hold his head in his hands. He’s kneeling on the hardwood floor, smooth and cold in a different way than the snow was, uncomfortable against his knobby knees. “I can’t, I can’t. I won’t. But if you take another step closer, Lieutenant, it might –” he swallows, “—she might—”

Hank frowns in that same way he does when he’s pissed off, and the rattling ache in Connor’s chest worsens.

“Connor,” he says slowly, “there’s no one else here.”

Connor shakes his head. “It’s my programming. She’s an AI. She – they attempted to take control of me during Markus’s speech in November. I thought – I thought I –”

Hank starts to walk again.

“No. No! What are you –” Connor tries to protest, but when Hank’s hand comes down on his shoulder he finds he doesn’t respond. There’s nothing in his hands save for the hair on his head. There’s no gun anywhere to be seen, nothing lethal at all in his vicinity. Nothing happens except a sudden, crushing heat as Hank wraps his arms around him and squeezes.

“Listen,” he starts. “I, uh. I dunno shit about the way your brain is supposed to work, especially now that you can think for yourself. But it sounds like you might’ve had a nightmare.”

Connor’s thirium pump continues rattling, spinning too fast, but not as badly as before. His hands loosen from his hair. “What?”

“You were talking in your sleep, Con. Saying shit like ‘no’ and ‘stop.’ Sometimes humans with uh…” Hank hesitates before backtracking, “well, sometimes they just do that when they’re having a bad time sleeping.”

“I don’t sleep,” Connor bites back, habit still forcing him to drain the emotion from his tone.

“Yeah, well, whatever the fuck you do.” Hank finally pulls back from the hug, and settles back on his haunches. The hand previously on Connor’s shoulder slides down, settling at his elbow. Hank’s thumb rests gently in the crook of his arm. He feels so different from Amanda. So…soft.

“Are you okay?” he asks again, this time looking him dead in the eyes.

Connor’s chest still struggles with breath, and his internal fan hasn’t clicked off yet. But he’s better. He’s better.

“I’m –” he starts out, lost. “I’m sorry, Lieutenant. I didn’t mean to wake you up, or to worry you.”

Hank hangs his head, only to bring it back up with a wry smile. “Shit, Connor, you don’t have to apologize for this.”

“Are you sure that you want to be around me, after expressing my fear of –” his breath hitches, his words catch, “—potentially causing you harm?”

Hank doesn’t speak for a moment, searching his face. “Yeah. Of course I do.” His smile turns into something more genuine. “I got plenty of faith in you to fight back, even if something was going on up there.” He flicks his finger against Connor’s forehead, and though startled, Connor can’t help but smile in his own small way.

“Thank you, Hank,” he says, quietly. The fan clicks off.

Hank begins to stand, and Connor can’t help but rise with him. In the amount of time it takes Hank to brush down his boxers of the grit from the floor, Connor runs a basic diagnostic – but the only errors it returns are the software instabilities that come with deviancy, and not anything new.

Maybe he really is turning into a human.

“Anyway,” he hears Hank say, and dismisses the error readout from his HUD. “Uh…”

“You can go back to bed, Hank. I appear to be fine.”

“All systems operational?” he half jokes.

“More or less.”

Hank looks down at their feet, betraying…embarrassment? It seems to match with his body language, but Connor doesn’t particularly understand what there is to be embarrassed about in this situation. Unless nightmares are some social faux pas he wasn’t aware of. His breathing ratchets up again.

“Listen, Connor,” Hank begins. “You still seem kinda…shaken.”

“I’m functional,” Connor replies.

“That’s not what I said. I said shaken. I guess…I was wondering if uh…” Hank scratches the back of his head, just underneath his shaggy gray hair. “Do you wanna…come sleep in the bed?”

His social relations program runs through the connotations of the sentence, Hank’s embarrassment. “Are you coming onto me, Lieutenant?”

“Oh for fuck’s—Connor –”

“Yes, Hank.” The answer falls out of his mouth before Connor has time to even weigh the pros and cons. “If it won’t disturb your sleep, that is. But I would…value being close to you. Especially after such an experience.”

“Christ, you’re so blunt,” Hank mutters. He reaches for Connor’s hand anyway, the one that held the gun, and laces his calloused fingers through. “C’mon.”

Connor follows as they round the couch and approach the bedroom, dark except for a single, small lamp at Hank’s bedside. Sumo lifts his head from where he’s sleeping on the floor at the foot of the bed – when Hank settles down to sit on the mattress, he gives the dog a scratchy pet around the ears. Still grasping Hank’s hand tightly, Connor reaches down to pet him too.

Hank’s not fussy. Once Sumo settles down again he does the same, scooching himself to the left side of the bed and throwing a blanket around his legs. Connor stands by the corner, a little lost.

“C’mere,” Hank mumbles, like he’s already half-asleep.

Connor lowers himself onto the bed, kneeling at first, then shifting to his butt. Hesitantly, he reaches for Hank’s hand again, and Hank responds by practically dragging him down onto the empty space beside him.

“Think you can sleep again?” he asks, eyes closed.

“I believe I can re-enter stasis, yes.”

“Good.”

Hank slings an arm around Connor, pulling him closer. His breath is unpleasant, but the warmth he gives off is one that Connor realizes he never wants to sleep without again.

“G’night, Connor. Sleep well.”

Connor nods, even though there’s no one around to see it.

“Good night, Hank. I’m grateful you exist."

Hank pulls Connor closer, and Connor wraps an arm around him in turn before reactivating stasis.

**Author's Note:**

> back on my self-indulgent h/c bullshit
> 
> [title song](https://music.theohhellos.com/track/passerine)


End file.
